Pit Saw
We got a good start and arrived at Anja Community Reserve before it was crowded. On the way I spotted two guys sawing lumber in a pit saw. If we didn't already have a busy day, I would have liked to watch more closely.
Anja Community Reserve is a small, 46 hectare (~114 acre) community-run reserve. It provides a dramatic contrast between how Madagascar used to be and what much of it is like now. It is a great example of how biodiversity can be restored if you protect habitat. Unfortunately, Madagascar needs thousands of Anjas, and habitat to link them together so individuals can move back and forth to prevent inbreeding depression.
We met our guide and were getting ready when a zebu cart came barreling down the road with two men running after it. It was the first and only runaway zebu cart we saw during our stay; they soon recognized their folly and the wasted energy and calmed down.
In this small community reserve there are ~600 ring-tailed lemurs in from 20 to 25 family groups, each with a territory of approximately 2 ha. A dominant female is head of a family group. We walked a short distance and found our first Ring Tailed Lemurs, chowing down in a fig tree. Our guide told us these lemurs main food is lilac leaves and fruit; right now figs are in season, so that's where they were congregating. The figs are ripe for about a month. The lemurs were rather wasteful; adults would take one or two bites out of a fruit, discard it, and then grab another one. Youngsters made better use of the fruits, chewing on them for about two minutes before discarding the partially eaten fruit.
We had a great mix of birds on our morning walk around the forest. Besides the ones pictured, we saw Hamerkop, Yellow-billed Kite, Fody, and Madagascar Hoopoe.
Our guide had brought crickets and a substance he could loosely "glue" them to the end of a stick with. He held the stick where a chameleon could see it, and we could watch the chameleon "sneak up" and then Zap! Boy, is that tongue fast (see "Telescopic Tongue") (over 100 km/hr).
One of the cooler things we ran into was this really cool red flower. I spotted it from quite a ways away because it was so pretty. Except when I got up close, it wasn't a flower at all — it was a Flatid Leaf Insect. By looking like a flower, they are able to avoid being seen as potential prey by insectivores — birds, chameleons, etc. We saw both the adults (the red flower-like bugs) and the nymphs, which look like some other kind of flowering thing. Both life stages pierce tree bark with their mouths and feed on the phloem. The nymphs feed on a Madagascan liana, Elachyptera minimiflora, and produce honeydew, which the Coquerel's Coua eats.
Apparently the granite hills behind Anja contain some great endemic plants. Unfortunately, we did not take the circuit that went up there.
Between Ambalavao and Anja we saw a number of Standing Stones. According to Lova, they are erected to commemorate significant events or people in a tribe or family's history. Sometimes they cannot be placed where the event occurred, as it might be in a valley bottom now needed for rice production. Once you are made aware of them, you see them in a lot of places. There was one near where we started and ended our hike in Anja.
